Back in the way-back machine when Matador had our very first office (that wasn’t my apartment) we sold direct to stores in addition to selling our own singles and LP’s ; we started selling non matador records we liked, and soon-to-be matador related records. It was a way to keep the lights on with an extremely sparse release schedule (release dates? ha!) I would try to get stores to pick up these singles or albums COD, talking to folks like Bob Schick (of the mighty Honor Role) at Plan 9, Janet from Fallout, Mark Trehus at Oarfolkjokapus, Conrad Capistran at In Your Ear, Mike Lavella at Phantom of the Attic (he mailed me Quaaludes once) and Natalie Carlson at Aarons (boy she was a pain in the ass, but later I learned she was the coolest girl I ever met).

This was how Matador Direct got started. One of the first singles we carried was the very first Chunk single, pre-Matador, right when they had to change their name to Superchunk. The band hand colored 200 of these individual sleeves, and I kept this one. Pretty sweet indeed

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